The Virgin and the Beast (Stud Ranch 1)

But the way he’s standing, eyes flicking expectantly between me and the back door tells me there’s probably not going to be much lounging in my future. At least not today.

I don’t suppose explaining that I was never much of an outside girl would help at this point? I spent my summers at debate camp and doing even the most menial internships I could find at small businesses in New York. Anything I thought might look good on a college application. The outside was a place you had to endure to get to and from the subway station when traffic was too bad to bother with an Uber or a taxi.

Xavier jerks his head toward the door as he picks up his wide-brimmed hat from a side table and I get the unspoken verbal cue—he’s big on those—time to get moving.

I head out the door. From the clock in the kitchen I saw that it’s eight in the morning. By the look of Xavier, he’s already been up several hours. I think that the times I’ve seen him leaving in the mornings are actually when he’s come back to the house after having been out already several hours, like today. As in, he gets up around four-thirty or something crazy like that, then comes back in for breakfast at seven or eight.

I’ve always been something of a night owl and while I worked my ass off and was never late, you never saw me at the office a minute before 8:55.

Morning people freak me out.

Shocker that Xavier loves waking up before the crack of dawn.

When I step outside, it smells like fresh grass and… is that cow manure? Awesome. Loving this already.

Not to mention the first sight that greets me is the dog enclosure that was my home for two and a half days. For a second, my feet freeze. Is this all a ruse and he’s just trying to get me out here so he can lock me back up in there again?

But no, his hand comes to the small of my back and he directs us away from the chain-link cage and around the far side of the house, toward the part of the property I haven’t been able to see before. My room faces the front of the house and this area is what could be called the ‘side yard,’ even though it opens up to endless land.

Then we turn the corner and—holy shit!

There’s one large barn or stable and then several smaller out buildings.

And horses.

A lot of horses.

Okay, so maybe only nine or ten, but to a person who’s never seen a horse up close and in person, that’s a ton of horses!

There are several large paddo

cks and pastures, some with several horses together, others with just a single horse. A couple are running with manes flying out gloriously in the morning sunlight.

I turn around to look at Xavier in surprise.

Right in time to see him twirling a lasso in the air.

“What are—?”

Which is when he lets it fly.

It lands over my head, right over my shoulders. He cinches it tight.

You heard me right.

The bastard just lassoed me like I’m a damn stock animal.

Chapter 11

“Lesson one,” Xavier says, calm as can be as he tugs me toward him by the rope around my upper arms. “Expect the unexpected when dealing with an animal that can weigh up to two thousand pounds and isn’t afraid to let you know it.”

He walks forward as he coils the rope and reels me in until we meet in the middle, his hand around the knot of the lasso that meets right in between my breasts. “Lesson two. Listen to everything I say today and not just because I’m Master. Every instruction I give you is for your safety. Do you understand?”

For just a second, he seems to drop the dominance act. When he searches my eyes, I feel like it’s a plea that’s made as if we’re on equal footing, not something else he’s trying to manipulate from me.

I nod. And then wait for him to remove the rope from around my body.

Silly me.